All Aboard the Big Green Bus

As Pope-mania is in full swing today Celtic related news is thin on the ground. I’m hoping though that Artur Boruc runs across the stage in Bellahouston Park with a Papal flag. If your of a religious persuasion I hope you enjoyed your day out in Glasgow, personally it’s not for me, but the thought of Pope Benedict inducing the hoofed hordes to incandescent rage by his mere presence is helping me to enjoy the broadcast on Sky News as I write this.

Suuuuubooooo has just left the stage, she hates the rangers too you know.

Aye, anyway, all aboard the big green bus, what’s that all about?

I had the misfortune of tuning into the absolute snorefest at Old Trafford on Tuesday night. Neither wonder they call it the theatre of dreams! I was fighting sleep all the way through it. The buzz phrase during and after the game on the message-boards and Twitter was that rangers had ‘parked the bus’ with their 9-1-0 formation. Many Celtic fans, it seems, think Walter no surname’s tactics were an affront to the beautiful game. Personally I think any game featuring the faces of the men in blue can never be described as beautiful and as for Wayne Rooney! well it makes me feel better every time I look in the mirror.

I read many many Celtic fans saying they would rather see Celtic humped than play like ‘they’ did the other night. Really? Let’s discuss.

Our continuing European chatter for the season has been reduced to sniping about the team from Ipox. That in itself is sad.

Would you have ‘parked the bus’ in Braga or Utrecht to ensure Celtic’s continued European involvement this year? I most certainly would have. Sure it’s not the Glasgow Celtic way but at the same time you can’t polish a shite. Have you ever tried building an MFI wardrobe with a child’s toy tool kit? We do not have the players to perform the way we would like in Europe, well not that early in the campaign at least. I would have loved Celtic to have come away from Holland after successfully defending our 2 goal lead by any means possible. The other side of that coin is though that we might not have the players that could strangle a game like they did in Manchester for 90 minutes. I doubt we would have lost 4 goals though if we had shut up the shop and manned the barricades.

Then again on the other hand if we had made it through to the group stages it would have been purely for financial gain. So yes I agree that I would have liked Celtic to just go for it at all costs once we got to the top table. I would never like to hear opposition players being interviewed after a match at Celtic Park describing our side as indulging in anti-football and destroying our reputation as a club that tries to play attractive football at all times.

In summary I would have choked the game to get to the group stages then played open(ish) football from there on in. Sometimes I think we need to re-check our ambitions of what the players we have available are capable of doing.

In other news Celtic have reportedly taken USA under 20 international striker Gustavo Ruelas on loan from Mexican side Santos Laguna. I hear he’s signed until the end of the season with an option to buy thereafter. Santos Laguna are now in a feeder club type situation with us and if the 19 year old makes an impact like the other bhoy we brought from Mexico in the summer this could be a great piece of business.

I believe the South American market is somewhere we will go shopping now more and more in the future. There must be buckets of untapped talent over there and you need only look at the amount of South Americans that play in other leagues all over Europe to tell you that there is good, exciting players and quality to be had. The other big plus for Celtic is that if we can unearth these gems at a young age we’re going to get them at bargain bucket prices with massive sell-on value if they are successful. I don’t really buy into the argument that they might not be able to handle the weather etc in Scotland. Pay me a good few grand a week and this ginger haired freckled Scotsman who can’t go in the sun for more than 5 minutes at a time would happily move to Mexico and ply his trade. It’s fitba no digging the roads we’re talking about here.

More burrito’s and less kebabs will do me just fine…

Right mass is kicking off now on the tele box so I’ll speak to you all again next week.

Amen

Harper

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